EC to webcast Kerala Assembly Elections live from 93 polling stations

Tvm: The Election Commission has decided to webcast the voting for the Kerala Legislative Assembly to be held on April 13, 2011. The live streaming from the sensitive polling stations across Kerala would help in the online and remote monitoring of voting. This was announced by the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Dr. S Y Quraishi today while briefing the media in Thiruvananthapuram.

Dr. S Y Quraishi said, “This idea was first implemented by a young IAS Officer in a remote polling station in Manipur during the last elections and it was found to be very effective. Since the webcast is available on the Internet, anyone can view the polling process. This is yet another initiative of the Election Commission to improve the transparency in the electoral process and also to provide a level playing field for free and fair elections”. The poll monitoring will be done at the District, State and National levels.

Such large scale webcasting is being introduced for first time in this election to be held in five states. In Kerala, State owned Enterprise, Keltron has been assigned the task of webcasting from the polling stations.

The sensitive polling booths will be identified only a couple of days ahead of the elections after analysing the law and order situations at each locality as well as various other factors. The Election Commission has an 11 point check list to determine sensitive booths. The webcasting facilities will be installed once the sensitive booths are identified.

There are 20,758 polling stations in Kerala. There are 2,29,47,469 crore voters in Kerala with women outnumbering the men by about 10 lakhs.

The Election Commission has also launched an integrated call centre with nationwide toll free number 1965 to address poll related issues. Election Commissioners V S Sampath and H S Brahma, and State Chief Electoral Officer Nalini Netto were present on the occasion.

News Update

About 3,700 polling stations in Kerala have been identified as sensitive and special arrangements have been put in place in each of these stations. Out of these, polling from 93 super sensitive stations will be webcast live.